


The Third Half

by volunteerfd



Category: Merrily We Roll Along - Sondheim/Furth
Genre: F/F, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-30
Updated: 2019-08-30
Packaged: 2020-09-30 09:37:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,438
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20444996
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/volunteerfd/pseuds/volunteerfd
Summary: Charley and Frank reuinite at Mary's wedding and afterwards.





	The Third Half

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to twentyghosts for reading!
> 
> I began working on this ages ago and then gave up, but with the news of the Merrily movie coming out in 20 years I figured I'd better hurry up and finish it.

There’s never a bad time to marry your wife on your big old marijuana farm in Vermont, and since Mary couldn’t do any of that when she was 20, why not do it when she’s 80? Charley’s happy for her. Thrilled. He doesn’t think twice before penciling a checkmark next to “yes.” He thinks twice once it’s penciled, though, and doesn’t allow himself to dwell until the envelope’s in a big blue post office box at the end of the block. He wants to call and ask her about the guest list but he hates talking on the phone. He could text her but the flip phone’s a hassle, pressing numbers three times to get a letter, and then sometimes overshooting and needing to press six. Half his kids beg him to get a cellphone and the other half fear teaching him how to use it and the third half worry two steps ahead--what’s going to happen if he gets a Twitter. And he doubts Mary even has a landline, anyway.

So he RSVP’s and since he RSVP’d he can’t back out. Evelyn would have a conniption and a half, one because it’s rude and two because she’d be the one stuck on the phone explaining that Charley has a case of terminal congenital laryngitis and three--a fact he often forgot--Evelyn and Mary were college roommates and you can’t miss your octagenarian college roommate’s lesbian wedding. You just can’t.

  
  


* * *

Mary has never been a stickler for etiquette, so it’s a surprise that she abides by the old-fashioned wedding rule that couples should not be seated next to each other. At the same table, yes. Next to each other, no. Evelyn does not seem at all surprised. She makes a beeline for her reserved chair a couple of seats away from Charley, and Charley takes his assigned seat. Next to Frank.

Evelyn does not even glance at Charley. He’s been ambushed. Goddamn it, of course Evelyn and Mary had a scheme; they were roommates.

Frank and Charley look at each other, because it would be too awkward to not at least do that, and the polar ice caps thaw between them like a time-lapsed video about climate change. That’s not to say there’s warmth, but rather the possibility of flooding and destruction. 

Something about Frank makes him young again--petty and spiteful and temperamental. And then he reminds himself he’s old, and his blood shouldn’t run so hot, because he’s on medication for that, so he smiles carefully and says, “Hey, old friend.”

By the end of the night, they’re drunk and teary from fond reminiscences and Mary’s wedding vows. She returned to her roots--using her gift with language to brighten a room instead of shuttering it in darkness. Having someone on the receiving end of her words who reciprocated her love must have made all the difference. Frank and Charley finally work up the nerve--and the inebriation--to greet her. 

“I guess you’ve finally gotten over me,” Frank says with a good-natured grin.

“My God,” Mary rasps, “I can’t even remember who you are,” and she pulls him in for a hug.

* * *

Charley and Evelyn have an arrangement, and that arrangement is they’re a thousand years old and can do whatever they want with whomever they want, given the normal considerations of legality and ethics. After all, all five of their kids are fully grown, not that they were ever sticklers for traditional family values, and they themselves have been on this earth for a million years so why not do whatever? They’ve been alive for a billion years so they earned this. They’ve had this arrangement since they turned forty.

One of them uses the arrangement much more than the other, but Charley can’t shake the feeling that it originated with him in mind, that it started as a placeholder for this very moment. The moment he can finally look at Frank and not crumble. The moment Frank can finally look at him and not throw a punch. The moment they can look at each other and say fuck it, and they don’t even wait to go back to New York because they’ve already waited too long; they tumble into bed in Frank’s hotel room as the fall foilage rustles against the window. And then they do it again when they get back to New York. They don’t have a lot of time for a lot of things, but most importantly, they do not have enough time for another fight. They only have enough time for whatever they want.

* * *

Charley can only see Frank as a bright-eyed twenty-something. He’s not crazy or senile or anything. He knows that Frank’s hair has greyed and thinned while his remained miraculously lustrous. He sees Frank’s lined and pockmarked face. But that’s all just physical. He wonders if this is what people mean when they say they can see auras. If it is, he might finally believe in that nonsense.

* * *

You’d think that a fifty-year wait between collaborations would dampen public enthusiasm. After all, most of their peers and fans died, and their names have been overwritten by more famous ones: Pasek & Paul, Kitt & Yorkey, Lin-Manuel & Miranda. The only people who care about Shepard & Kringas are theatre historians and grown stage kids--the most insufferable people, really. 

It turns out, of course, that it’s big news, and everyone becomes a theatre aficionado with opinions on Shepard and Kringas’ new project (with contributions by Mary Flynn). Lin even Twittered about them, sending a new generation of 16-year olds into a frantic Google search for Shepard & Kringas & Flynn.

Eightysomething is too old to start a musical if the Internet monolith has anything to say about it (and they do, of course they do). Most people in the world don’t know what it’s like to be eightysomething, and even fewer people on the Internet do. But Charley and Frank aren’t writing an industry breakthrough or a commercial hit or their legacies; they’re simply writing a musical. Charley’s always been too old to care what anyone thinks about him and Frank has finally caught up, so they go for the avant-garde jugular, an adaptation of a Spanish filmmaker’s oeuvre that is sure to disappoint their new teenage fans.

There’s lots of morbid speculation about their deaths, and it fills Charley with indignation-- _ he’s  _ the only one who’s allowed to obsess over his death. And 80’s not that old. 50 seemed older. Once you’re over a certain age, it’s like time starts moving backwards, and you care about aging as much as you did when you were 18.

They even do a few interviews, good-naturedly joking about Charley’s infamous freakout. If it had happened nowadays, it might have gone viral in full HD splendor. But the only footage they managed to dig up is grainy, glitchy, 70’s camerawork that played for 30 seconds before switching, abruptly, to some 80’s after school special. That’s the only footage of Charley Kringas’ famous meltdown. Not even the Theatre on Film and Tape archives has the complete thing. There’s something symbolic about that, Charley thinks.

* * *

Charley clacks away at his typewriter and Frank sits at his piano. It’s their relationship rewound sixty years to when they were cranking out  _ Musical Husbands _ . like they grafted the most magical part of their friendship. There are some angry moments, but just a few. Part of Charley hopes that only six people like their show and that everyone on the Internet gets mad about it. Frank does, too. Another part of Charley hopes it’s a triumphant commercial and critical success. So does Frank. Mostly, they don’t care if anyone sees their work except each other. 

This story ends on that note: before they finish their show. It ends before the curtain rises on whatever first scene tableau they’ve created, and before their celebratory opening night drinks with Evelyn and Mary and Mary’s wife and the cadre of Kringas kids and maybe Frank Jr. if he’s decided to start talking to his namesake again. It ends before they go back to their old rooftop to hang a plaque--before they settle their three-way argument about their exact address, because depending on who’s right, their old apartment might now be a luxury mall, high-end office buildings, or a vacant lot. It ends with Charley’s hapless kids trying to explain that, no, they can’t just Google where their first apartment in the 50’s was, and with Charley and Frank toiling away at an unfinished musical. But, on the other hand, it also ends before they die--and before the reviews come out. 


End file.
